Pollution-emitting biomass facilities are not clean energy and will cause more disease and drive up already soaring health care costs for Americans.

Letter to

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Protect Americans from Biomass Energy Air Pollution

In a January 30, 2013 letter to President Obama, you and fifteen of your colleagues in the U.S. Senate wrote that “pollution can cause asthma attacks, heart and lung disease, cancer, damage to the reproductive system, strokes, and premature death.” You said that you “stand ready to work with [the President] to use available tools to provide stronger safeguards that will address dangerous air pollution.”

With your clearly stated intentions on the public record, we, the undersigned, are writing to ask you to expand upon your laudable efforts on behalf of the health and well-being of all Americans by ending your support for the expansion of polluting industrial-scale biomass energy.

The health impacts of emissions from biomass burning were the subject of a Congressional briefing on September 25, 2012. A scientist and medical doctors presented detailed information on ultrafine particulate matter, lung disease in children, and dioxin poisoning.

Pollution-emitting biomass facilities—like other forms of incineration—are not clean energy and will cause more disease and drive up already soaring health care costs for Americans. Children, the elderly, people suffering from asthma and other preexisting medical conditions, and low-income residents and communities of color (who often live in close proximity to these facilities) are especially vulnerable.

We, the undersigned, ask that you and the entire Congress please:1) stop classifying polluting and human disease-causing biomass incinerators as “clean,” “renewable” or “sustainable” energy and2) end subsidies for polluting industrial-scale biomass facilities.

Please redirect your well-intentioned efforts to creating more jobs in the conservation, efficiency, solar, wind, and energy storage industries that will not be a burden on our health care systems and will protect public health and the environment.